Names of those who were before you, of those you loved, those you kill
by Mary-Ellen-Junior
Summary: Little moments between Haytham and his son. Conversations about the past, the future, the second they live in...
1. Chapter 1

I'm NO mothertongue...so please tell me my weakness I have in this little story  
Second: I haven't read the book forsaken, I imagined my own story to haytham  
third: enjoy

When he woke up, he shivered. His breath was cold and danced before his lips like fairies. It felt strange because at first he did not exactly recognised his environment, something he hadn't had for a while. A strange and dragging feeling straiten his chest and if he hadn't known it better, Haytham Kenway would have called this feeling: anxiety. The Templar smirked. How long hadn't he have this feeling? Thirty years? Or better 25. Was he becoming pathetic, mad even? Driven insane by his victims, who now wanted revenge and wouldn't rest unto he'd committed suicide? The old man sighed. A sound made his head turn as he saw a young man, not far away of him, squirming and writhing. Immediately the Templar analyzed his surrounding and was somehow surprised to be in a cave. Then his eyes fixed again to the now resting body. He hadn't seen the boy sleeping until now. The Assassin reminded Haytham painfully of Zio. Slowly he stood up. The sun was rising. He should have a clear head when they moved on. So he might take a bath, he remembered a little river, near the cave that wasn't iced by the heavy snow outside. With a last glance to Connor, the older Kenway scurried like a cat into the snow, while the sky was plunged into red ink.  
Icy wasn't even a beginning to describe the water Haytham dived in, but the Templar endured it. Sometimes you have to suffer, he thought ironically and breathed heavy, while all the buzzing thoughts became like soft waves and a relieving smile left his lips. He remembered lying in the bed while Zio hummed sweet songs, he did not understand, but just the sound made him feel almost heavenly. Sadly that she had to die...and again the waves grew stronger, loud and harsh they were, destroying the relief and the emptiness in his head.

"Are you going to commit suicide, or what exactly is the purpose of your doing?"

Haytham did not immediately understand the words of his son, who leaned, fully armored, on a huge tree, where the older one had put his clothes for not getting them wet. For moments father and son just stared at each other, as if they've never met before.  
"Good morning to you as well, Connor. Would you mind turning around?"  
Realising the situation , the native made a funny sound, like a girl, Haytham thought ad then stood with the back to the Templar.  
"My most profound thanks, son."  
Connor could listen to the sound of splashing water and the breathing of his father while he tried to foculise anything but the older Kenway. Too anxious for anything he immediately turned around as he heard an unfamiliar sound and saw...  
A huge and somehow beautiful cross was on the back of his father's. It was old, that for sure, but how old he could not say. It was plain, but at the same time, full of thousand little details and a ghastly image popped up in his head as if somebody had punched him in the face. How long did his father had to stand there and endure this procedure? How old was he? And why was it made? Did every templar have this sign? Maybe because of his fright his mouth started to speak without hesitation.  
"What is that?"  
"What?"  
Haytham Kenway just slipped his white shirt on, then looked at him with a confused glance in the normally cold blue eyes.  
"You have a cross on your back."  
A short pause.  
"Yes, dear boy. There is a cross on my back."  
"Why do you have it?"  
A deep sigh left his father's throat and reminded Connor of a horrific thunderstorm.  
"Would you mind to shut up, get our bags, get the horses and then to possibly move on?"  
"How long do you have it?"  
Haytham Kenway sighed again...deeper.  
"A while. Would you please..."  
"How long?"  
"Since I'm sixteen and now..."  
"That can't be, a scar..."  
"It was made by blunt knifes and very deep so it would stay longer than usual and..."  
"But why?"  
"Because I became a Templar and NOW..."  
"Did it hurt?"  
"I will rip your heart out right of your chest if you don't stop asking!"  
Silence.  
Haytham had almost screamed the last sentence. Both men stared at each other. Brown into blue. Connor got a strange feeling. His brown eyes analyzed Haytham whose breathing was loud and heavy, the eyes blank. The man before him, was not a man, but a boy, who was completely overwhelmed with this situation and the Assassin had a guess why. There was a memory, locked, forgotten, even buried, until Connor had pushed himself against it and now both of them did not know, what to do with the open door. Should they go on? Open another door? Or just close it and call the whole thing a foolish accident? There were seconds to decide and Connor had to choose.  
"What do these little signs on the cross mean?"  
He had a fifty/fifty chance...  
"Names of those who were before you, of those you loved, those you killed and our law."  
"That is much."  
A dry chuckle that almost sounded insane.  
"That's true."  
"So you were not born as a Templar?"  
"How...-"  
"You said you were sixteen. What changed your mind?"  
"My wife."  
Silence.  
"You had a wife with sixteen?"  
"And a child."  
Again: silence.  
Connor did not know what to say, he got too much information and at the same time, he had the aching realization, he did not know anything.  
"Who are you?", asked the young man.  
His father smiled honest and nearly kindly.  
"A murderer...like you."  
"I'm not-"  
Silence.  
"What happened to your wife and child?"  
"Wife: shot. Child: burned. Any more details?"  
And there he was again: the cold-hearted, british Templar, emotionless like the cold water he dived in. The voice sarcastically dead and the blue eyes hard as steel. Connor felt pity for the man before him and sorrow weight for moments his shoulders.  
"I'm..."  
The hand of his father was ice-cold and reminded Connor of a corpse.  
"Don't show affection where there is no. Do we understand each other?"  
A short nod.  
"Get the horses. NOW."  
There was no chance, so Connor did as he was told to. When he came back, the Templar waited for him, avoiding his eyes. With a sigh the native gave his father the rein. They saddled up and Haytham wanted to spur at once his horse, so there would be no conversation.  
"Haytham!"  
Blue met brown.  
"You look like your mother sometimes, you know?"  
"What was it's name?"  
"Of my daughter? Margarete, why?"  
"I don't know."  
"You're strange boy."  
"Here!"  
The young man threw the bag of the older one to Haytham who caught it immediately.  
"You forgot your bag."  
Finally they started riding.  
"Father?"  
The Templar turned his head, but no other word left his sons lips and the old man foculised again on the street.  
But somehow...Haytham Kenway had to smile a little bit.  
What a strange night, he thought ...with no sleep since thirty years.  
And what a strange day with a smile he was glad his son couldn't see it.  
Then, the Templar whispered the word "Father" and shouldered his bag.  
A nice word, he thought.  
A really nice word.


	2. Chapter 2

It's short, but maybe pleasant...have fun ;-)

When he waited for his father, he saw a young woman and a man with a girl giggling around. Somehow he had to smile. He liked these pictures, they always seemed to show him a little light on these dark days. The man dandled his little girl and the young woman went back into the house.  
"Becoming mawkish?"  
Connor grinned.  
"Not really. You?"  
"Sometimes..."  
The young assassin turned around to look at his father.  
"We have to go."  
"Then come."  
And both Templar and son left the laughing man with his little, little daughter.  
Later when they rode a muddy path, Connor almost fell of the horse. He seemed not quite here but elsewhere. His father sighed.  
"What are you thinking about?"  
"Did your father play with you?"  
"That is the reason of almost falling of the horse? Are you a little dreamer?"  
"Did he?"  
The British did not answer immediately. And Connor felt horribly awkward.  
"No. He did not. He loved to hit me but playing around...was not his type."  
And the young assassin had no idea what to answer.  
"But believe me...quite normal in the richer part of society. There's no love. Kindness, openness, love you find by those who suffered the most and go starving to bed."  
"As if you-"  
"Believe me I do."  
"You don't look like a farmer with no idea what he shall eat because the taxes are so high."  
"And you behave like most of the world."  
The black horse the Templar sat on, stopped and Haytham twisted to stare right into his son's beautiful eyes.  
"Don't judge a man until you've walked a day in his shoes. Am I understood?"  
But his son would not surrender.  
"Then tell me," Connor asked sardonically, while he rode right next to his father, whose eyes became alarming blank. "Where did poor people showed you their love? When they cleaned your clothes? When-"  
"Believe it or not, son. Seven years I truly had to fear my landlord as a little farmer."  
Silence and Connor tried to imagine his father as a farmer working hard on the acre in the burning sun. There was no way for the native to get the picture in his head.  
"Why?", the younger one finally tried to not loose the conversation.  
"You remember I told you the story of daughter and wife?"  
The assassin nodded.  
"Well. Because of them. I wanted them to be safe but in the end it did not matter. Both died and the order requested my help which I gave gratefully."  
"Do you think of yourself as a great father?"  
Haytham's laughter was loud, dry and maybe evil in a way but mostly it sounded like a seagull, a mocking seagull.  
"What are you trying to achieve, son? What do you want to hear from me?"  
And the son did not know what to say. He was frozen in his actions, in his thoughts. Everything tasted bitter and a strange buzzing filled his head like bees.  
"I don't know," the native voice was low and tired.  
"Because I never had a chance."  
The younger one looked at his father.  
"What do you mean? What chance?"  
The Templar chuckled and blue met brown.  
"You're out of forgiveness, ain't you? I might do what I can, but you...you always see in me the evil, bad Templar whom you somehow like and also cooperate with but in the end it'll be your knife that sends me to your mother..."  
"I'd never-"  
"Never does not exist, son, remember that."


	3. Chapter 3

The snow was icy and both father and son breathed heavily to hide their shivering. Finally Connor could not stand it anymore.  
„We should rest."  
„You're such a boy."  
„And you're a coldhearted bastard."  
Haytham Kenway stopped and turned back to the younger man, who not exactly regretted, but felt bad for his true but not nicely said sentence. Blue stared into brown.  
„What did you just say, young man?"  
It was a rhetorical question, of course, and the Assassin somehow understood his mother's reasons for leaving the Templar. His father was sometimes ... frightening. But anyway, Connor was cold and he did not want to fight, so he sighed loudly and shrugged, obviously avoiding the glance of the older one.  
Suddenly he felt something cold and wet in his face, and before he knew what exactly was going on, more and more snow landed on his shoulders and his clothes soaked through.  
He fell to the left and glanced quickly to his father, who, smiling like a wolf, threw another snowball into his direction. For seconds Connor did not understand, or more, he could not conciliate the picture of the british, coldhearted, murdering templar with the man right before him. Then, the native stood up, a huge snowball in his hands and threw it with all his strength to the older Kenway who dodged by falling into the snow. That was his chance, thought the son and ran to his father, while taking as much snow as he could and with a yelling similar to a roar he threw his whole weight onto the poor, old man lying on the ground with no chance to defend himself. To the surpsrise of the younger man, the „coldhearted bastard" laughed loudly and joyfully while Connor pushed all the snow in Haythams face.  
In the end the icy snow became comfortable chilly, son and father breathing loud and somehow happy.  
„You're strange", said the Assassin.  
„I thought I am a coldhearted bastard?"  
„Yes...you are, but also strange."  
Haytham Kenway chuckled and got up. Then he sighed deeply, looking annoyed and amused at the same time.  
"You can't be everybody's darling."


End file.
